21 September 2005

martial law baby

decades ago today, the philippines was placed under martial law by a now-dead president. tyrant is more like it.

i've always been labeled as a martial law baby because i was born in april 1973. i was already in my mum's womb when it was declared. pero nang nagkamulat ako, puro dilaw na ang nasa kalye. i was 13 when cory aquino became president. so saan talaga ako belong? i don't know. actually, i don't care anymore.

thirtyplus years later, the country is still fucked up. i remember there was a time when i can convert one whole US dollar into pesos (twenty pesos) and i can even convert its smaller equivalents (dime, nickel, quarter). this was how i used to budget buying chocolate bars in vending machines inside clark air base in pampanga where my pop was stationed for a while as the manager of pldt. that was also how i budgeted how much was the cup of baskin robbins ice cream i was ordering (para hindi mapagalitan ni mommy na sobrang mahal). that was also how i computed how much i lost na in those huge pinball machines na pacman game sa bowling alley doon. i spent part of my childhood that way. now, i can't even keep up if the dollar is already 50 pesos or more, or if it already hit 60. hay naku. matutulad kaya tayo sa mga bansa tulad ng laos na ang denomination ng pera nila ay mas marami pa sa apat na zero dahil ganun kababa ang value ng pera nila? (yea, akala ko ang rich ng friend kong laotian when she showed me she had a 10,000 bill in her wallet. hindi pala).

anyway, why am i blogging this? i read a leaflet earlier kasi from...anak... one of those groups. anakbayan? something. inside UP, na martial law ek nga pala today, and they were encouraging people to march to oust gloria and wear red. so i wore my yellow-starred red shirt from hanoi that my friend dré gave me when she came home from vietnam dati. puwede na?

to answer your Q bjelland, anybody can write a lesbian story as long as the sensibilities of the story properly depict/reflect/uplift the lesbian experience. but that's just my opinion. crucial diyan yung uplift. dapat positivity naman ang maidulot ng new body of work sa lesbian literature ng non-lesbian writer. that goes for films, too. i'm just reacting on those macho men who try to interpret lesbian writings and infuse their own interpretations... kung interpretation nga bang matatawag iyon. what i mean is, adaptation na nga ini, di pa pinaghusayan. kung sinulat nila yun, ayos lang. look at kevin clark's... what's that film na may lesbian character? ewan ko. feeling ko forgivable yun pero he didn't try to reprsent naman the lesbian experience there e, parang a lesbian thru his eyes lang ang characterization so that's okay.

did i make sense?

parang yung sa pilot episode ng THE L WORD when one half of the lesbian couple was reacting to having a het male psychiatrist for their counseling session. e gets na gets naman ng doc yung lez experience so keri siyang pakinggan.

ay ewan basta yun na yun. hehe.

marami na namang nagsulat ng materyal na lesbian na di lesbian. si caroline hau yata may short story noon na ganito. parang ako, i have several published short stories with gay male leads. e hindi naman ako bakla in body (in spirit lang hehe). deva lola? so go write!

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